ProtonDrive Security Model - <AUTHOR> https://protonmail.com/blog/protondrive-security/ <comment><USER2> I tried really hard to move to protonmail and detach from a Google ecosystem, but really struggled to import my existing emails (their import/export tool was incredibly prone to breaking).

You're also locking yourself into an ecosystem without open apis. If you want mail on your phone you have to use their client, if you want it on the computer you need to install the protonmail bridge (which seems to restart itself and overlay over the top of whatever you're doing)

The apps don't seem to behave well on MacOS either, something about how the windows are designed means that they won't show up in the Mac cmd+tab switcher.

All this means that their security model is irrelevant to me, if I can't do the basic things that I need to do.

<comment><USER3> The ProtonMail app is open source: [https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail- android](https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail-android)

As is the bridge, and others.

I moved over ~6gb of emails without issue. I set up the bridge and transferred everything from Google to ProtonMail.

<comment><USER4> I don't have that much emails and faced lots of issues with the import tool, moving from a gmail account.

After more than 10 attempts and 3-4 exchange with their support I still have a few emails that haven't been imported successfully.

Other than that I'm a happy user. But I think that they should invest more in the bridge and importer/exporter tool, the user experience really isn't that great.

<comment><USER5> yes, very interested in the emails you can't import. I don't work for ProtonMail btw, just have quite bit of experience with smtp and email. Just curious from a tech perspective what kind of email you are having trouble importing.

<comment><USER6> I had tons of issues with mailman added headers causing entire HTML messages to be interpreted as plain text, rendering their encoding tags visible. I think they fixed this. I was still a bit surprised that this was an issue 1+ years into the IMAP bridge.

Big plus is that if you complain about this to their support things actually seem to get fixed? That was kind of a shocker, I'd suggest sending them a note if you have issues. Though this particular IMAP transfer between accounts has worked between my other email accounts (exchange and some linux server long ago) and gmail since I first tried it so it's a little sad. But a smaller team I guess? But paying for it so...

Mixed feelings for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem I have with ProtonMail or ProtonVPN is that they rely upon Neustar to handle all of their perimeter security, meaning that every single client that accesses their services will be inspected by Neustar, which IMO defeats the purpose. At the moment, I don't trust Neustar, and presume they're a US military contractor (located in Virginia).

<comment><USER8> protonmail states they're using Neustar for DDoS protection of their network:

[https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/email-ddos- pro...](https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/email-ddos-protection/)

Very few players have the capacity by themselve to handle a large DDoS these days.

And I'm not sure when talking about protonmail kind of encryption that Neustar has any special access to keys relative to say Level3, cogent or any transit provider between you and protonmail.

But may be I misunderstood your comment?

<comment><USER7> Not as long as it's understood that I feel Neustar was a poor choice given their line of business.

<comment><USER9> Or, they are a great choice. Defense contractors have unique defensive insight, and if properly fire-walled off from their other lines of business, can be of a net benefit. I worked for a British defense contractor, as an American working with the U.S. DoD. We were careful to dot our I's and cross our T's, but over all it worked well.

<comment><USER10> Would you say the same thing if it was, say, a Chinese defense contractor?

<comment><USER11> No why would you? The US has checks and balances to minimize abuse and keep data requests limited to the national security domain (like most countries in the western world or eyes alliances). The other has no such checks on those powers.

<comment><USER12> Do those "checks and balances" really matter in the light of what we've learned over the last seven years (and even before that)? It doesn't seem like there's much of "minimization" going on from the three letter agencies.

<comment><USER11> They do matter, completely. Has the data from national security programs ever been used for non-national security purposes (ie in public policing for instance)? It is rare if not unheard of in most western countries. Conversely, it is used all the time for censorship and policing in China.

These checks and balances declared the metadata programs unconstitutional.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/appeals-court-finds-nsas-bulk- phon...](https://www.cnet.com/news/appeals-court-finds-nsas-bulk-phone-data- collection-was-unlawful/)

Is the system perfect? Not even close, but it does strive to minimize abuse. Plenty of countries here in the EU have national security programs that operate in a similar fashion. The goal shouldn't be no data collection, it should strive to minimize abuse and keep collection limited to that national security concerns. None of that is true of the programs in China.

<comment><USER10> "Conversely, it is used all the time for censorship and policing in China."

Sure- in China. I'm not in China. Censorship might be a problem, but outside of that, I'd much rather have the Chinese government (and even Chinese local police!) have my metadata, and even data, than give the US national security apparatus the same access.

Corporate IP is another exception to this- it's pretty clearly better that the US, rather than China, have access to my work data.

But for, say, a Snowden-esque whistleblower in the US- can you really say they'd be better off with, say, DHS having access to all their data instead of the Chinese government? Obviously ideally nobody would, but for them, a system whose failure mode is "China can associate your IP and email address" is, I believe, dramatically better than "DHS/NSA can associate your IP and email address".

<comment><USER11> > But for, say, a Snowden-esque whistleblower in the US

Sure if you are acting on the state level against US or European governments China would be better but for everyone else I think it's extremely safe to say US/EU.

I'll add though that I am fairly confident the security of your data in the hands of the Chinese Government is far less secure than when in US/EU. Just last year hundreds of millions (yes hundreds) of social media logs and private chats were released on the web from a hack on a Chinese surveillance system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The killer feature here isn't end-to-end encryption, other services offer that and you can trivially roll your own with rclone, but the flexibility to share files on your filestore with other users without compromising that E2E encryption. I haven't seen anyone else offering that in a usable manner.

Pretty neat stuff. I hope they open-source it so I can self-host.

<comment><USER14> There is a few end-to-end encrypted storage providers[0][1], where you can share your files externally with other users without breaking the encryption for a long time.

Disclaimer: I work for the second one.

[0]: Sync.com [1]: Tresorit.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >model prevents any attacker who gains access to one of our servers from...

If an attacker gains access to your server, they can just inject javascript to gain access to whatever they want on the client's browser. I'm a big fan of Proton* products, and pay for a variety of their services.

However, I can't really get behind this method of data storage. But, it is the best option I've seen for centralized file storage. Syncthing is what I currently use for distributed storage, and I share encrypted files over that. Anyone have a better idea?

<comment><USER3> How many people are going to be using data storage through a web browser and not as a phone app or desktop background service?

<comment><USER16> ProtonDrive will launch as a web app first, but desktop and mobile apps will follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since the drive can be used to store and share docs related to sensitive topics such as covid, will this prevent it from being used in the Apple store unless they put filters into the app?

<comment><USER18> Protonmail should probably establish an Oversight Board to decide when to delete controversial files.

<comment> or-gate What? Why should I even trust them vs Google/other big corp?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I went in hard with email security a year or so ago. In the end I decided it was a broken system if security is the goal. I signed up for Hey and have really been enjoying it. I keep any secure comms on more secure platforms like Signal or Telegram.

<comment><USER19> Telegram shouldn't be considered secure due to the lack of e2e encryption by default.

<comment><USER20> Because 99% of people will choose the option with better UX instead of E2E.

I can grab any device (laptop, phone, tablet) and continue my group chats in Telegram.

E2E would require me to use only one device for that specific chat, which is makes it really hard to explain to a layperson.

<comment><USER21> Nope, there are plenty of chats with e2ee and all the conveniences you're mentioned.

<comment><USER4> Do you have examples? A chat application that has E2E and also let you carry your conversations between devices, that doesn't require you to pass through your mobile the way WhatsApp do it?

<comment><USER12> Wire (wire.com) has done it. You can install Wire on multiple devices and have the chats sync up. Every chat is E2E encrypted, one-to-one or group chats.

Even Signal Desktop does not require the communication to pass through the phone (or even to have the phone around after setup). WhatsApp is the odd one in this respect.

<comment><USER4> How does Wire do it?

Regarding Signal, they say this on their website:

> Signal Desktop is a Chrome app which links with your phone, so all incoming > and outgoing messages are displayed consistently on all your devices.

[https://signal.org/blog/signal-desktop/](https://signal.org/blog/signal- desktop/)

That seems similar to what WhatsApp does, but I haven't tried myself. Do you have more details on how that would work without passing by the mobile app?

<comment><USER22> It links to your phone to authenticate you. But from there, all messages are sent and received directly from the servers to all clients. So if your phone is off, but your desktop is on, the desktop client still receives them.

The catch is that if your desktop is off, it won't be able to "catch up" later on any messages that it missed. Although I don't see why that's impossible to implement in principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm guessing the password is tacked onto the URL as a fragment, which browsers do not send to the server. But this means that it relies on the trust that browsers follow this requirement.

<comment><USER24> It looks like you are correct, but only if you let them generate the password. If you define your own password, then you would have to share it via another channel-

>> While the Proton server will know the URL, it will never receive the password.

>> When creating a new shareable URL for a file, the web client will first confirm that a share directing to the file exists. The passphrase of this share must then be encrypted with the new password associated with the URL. This new password is either randomly generated by the ProtonDrive client, or is specified by the user.

>> In the case of randomly generated passwords, the user can choose whether they want to include it at the end of the URL, equivalent to sharing the content publicly. This section of the URL isn't shared with Proton servers, making the password and the content inaccessible to Proton. Alternatively, the user can choose to share the password separately.

>> In the case of user-defined passwords, this option isn't available and the password must always be communicated separately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I simply can't get around Proton's pricing model. A lot of services already work with rclone, which has a crypt backend on top that encrypts everything stored in the cloud. With ProtonMail's current Visionary plan, you get 40GB of storage for $30/mo and with ProtonDrive it looks like you'd get maybe 140GB of storage for $30/mo. G Suite is $12/mo and you get unlimited storage. If you're worried about security, you'd simply use GPG on top of IMAP or Mailvelope.

<comment><USER14> Would your mother understand the "simply use GPG on top of IMAP or Mailvelope" part? These E2EE products are not for the tech savy users, who are willing to go to the extra mile.

<comment><USER25> Gpg4win and Mailvelope are very easy for the average user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like protonmail a lot, and I'm a happy paying customer. But, I'm a bit sad they're rolling this out instead of improving their mail product. I don't want a google drive replacement. I suspect other users probably do.

But, I don't think people should generally be storing files in the cloud. And, I with Protonmail were finally finishing support for FIDO2 authentication rather than rolling out a cloud storage solution.

</comment><comment><USER27> Never really had issues with Bridge and have been a professional subscriber for about 8 months. I got the subscription mainly to use my ProtonMail email address with Thunderbird instead of mail client on MacOS. I don't agree with the "LAZY" way around getting a basic app install on Mac and p.c. Either way, I'm still a satisfied customer and haven't had any issues with my emails and transfers.

<comment><USER28> I agree here. Literally never have issues with having separate phone app or bridge on PC. Most of these complaints are the typical over engineering stuff that gets built into things and takes up time and resources and less than 1% care about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If password is reset, protonmail says I will lose all my mails; Is it rational ?

<comment><USER30> I recently reset my password; providing the old password any time you remember it allows you to decrypt old emails (in the case of Proton, your password is the AES decryption password for your PGP RSA key [0]).

[0] [https://protonmail.com/docs/business- whitepaper.pdf](https://protonmail.com/docs/business-whitepaper.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> uh huh, still waiting for that calendar.

<comment><USER32> From what I read they weren't setup to host multiple apps and needed a somewhat large refactor to do that. The calendar on beta.protonmail.com is probably what will be released to production.

The only thing to smooth over, from my understanding, is the fact that they did a lot of refactoring to become multi-app.

Disclaimer: My understanding could be wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For me the key feature(s) I want that Proton doesn't have is the docs and spreadsheets. If you're already on Google Suites/apps it's hard to move over without those.

<comment><USER25> If you want secure email on Google you can always use GPG with IMAP or Mailvelope. Additionally, for Drive storage you can use rclone with a crypt overlay.

<comment><USER33> It's more I don't want to use Google than I want secure email or secure services.

<comment><USER34> Another vote for Fastmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would _never_ trust anything *proton. They hide behind Swiss law but will cave to any serious American request for info.

<comment><USER4> What is your threat model?

<comment><USER35> Anything and everything. I'm serious.

<comment><AUTHOR> You probably shouldn't be posting on HN.

<comment><USER35> I understand what this site is about so no issue here.

<comment><USER36> Michael? Perhaps you shouldn't trust this site, it's all randoms just like anywhere.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Liquid Haskell: Haskell as a Theorem Prover [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://goto.ucsd.edu/~nvazou/thesis/main.pdf <comment><USER2> There is an interactive tutorial at [1].

I find this quite amazing. With refinement types one can say/prove things like:

\- This function only returns even numbers.

\- The input for this function is not just any vector, it must be an ordered vector.

\- It's possible to make compile time unit tests. Where we write a function that exercises the code, and returns True if the test succeeds. Then one adds a refinement type saying that the function must always evaluate to true. The theorem prover does the rest.

[1] - [http://ucsd-progsys.github.io/liquidhaskell- tutorial/02-logi...](http://ucsd-progsys.github.io/liquidhaskell- tutorial/02-logic.html#/examples-arithmetic)

<comment><USER3> There have been quite a few systems that can handle proofs of the kinds of propositions you list above using various different logical frameworks, programming languages, and automatic and/or user-guided proof assistants.

That said, it's no small feat to do a correct translation from the semantics of a full, modern, programming language into the semantics of a SMT solver (which appears to be the primary back-end for deciding propositions in this tool). I'll have to go read the actual dissertation to see how far that goes and whether any escape-hatches for user guidance exist (tactics, manual term manipulation, etc.). I haven't yet found a tool that doesn't allow extensive user guidance to be all that effective for proving things about code/systems that are interesting (to me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Talk by Niki Vazou, the author of the dissertation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEsEME7JwEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEsEME7JwEE)

</comment><comment><USER5> The very first blogpost [http://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/liquid/haskell/blog/blog/2013/0...](http://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/liquid/haskell/blog/blog/2013/01/01/refinement- types-101.lhs/) gives a very nice jargon and maths-free introduction to this. You don't need to know Haskell to follow it really.

The assert function shown in the post is really cool. Amazing how easy it is to define a function that will compile time check an assertion (e.g. something is not "null"). That's code contracts done in the 101 class.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like to learn more about how the Liquid Types style of refinement types works under the covers, I invite you to read Pat Rondon's thesis:

[http://goto.ucsd.edu/~pmr/papers/rondon-liquid- types.pdf](http://goto.ucsd.edu/~pmr/papers/rondon-liquid-types.pdf)

The UCSD Programming Systems lab has also applied refinement types to dynamic languages[1] and systems programming languages[2]. The MIT Computer Assisted Programming Group has similarly used liquid types-based techniques for program synthesis[3], while a group at Purdue has been working on maching learning of complex refinement types[4,5] that are difficult to state or infer using the liquid types techniques.

[1] [http://goto.ucsd.edu/~pvekris/docs/pldi16.pdf](http://goto.ucsd.edu/~pvekris/docs/pldi16.pdf)

[2] [http://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/papers/low_level_liquid_types.p...](http://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/papers/low_level_liquid_types.pdf)

[3] [http://people.csail.mit.edu/polikarn/publications/pldi16.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/polikarn/publications/pldi16.pdf)

[4] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/icfp_my_version.pdf)

[5] [https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/zhu103/pubs/pldipaper.pdf](https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/zhu103/pubs/pldipaper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is cool because it's in Haskell, but there are a bunch of great formal theorem provers, coq ([https://coq.inria.fr/](https://coq.inria.fr/)) being one of the most famous ones.

<comment><USER8> I would like to emphasize that this gives you a theorem prover "inside" haskell, unlike coq/agda where you need to do program extraction. This means you can combine proofs and programs without a significant impact to the runtime performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this delightfully coincidental that the very moment I found this I was sitting in AI class as my professor stresses the usefulness of a good automated theorem prover.

<comment><USER10> Offtopic but I absolutely love it when those "delightful coincidences" or synchronicities occur. Examples also include me learning about something right before someone else brings it up.

<comment><USER11> I do too.

I suspect they're a form of confirmation bias, however, because it's not easy to remember that you heard about an idea or term you're unfamiliar with. On the other hand, something you've just recently heard or learned stands out: it reinforces the lesson you've just learned.

<comment><USER12> You'd probably be interested in this article about the phenomenon: [https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof- phenomeno...](https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks!

This has me down a rabbit-hole because I'm now trying to find the name for a related concept: once you've learned a new idea/model, you start to notice how it applies to everything around you. I find this happening most often with algebraic ideas but the article you linked alludes to the fact that you're liable to notice this effect at play more in the days after reading about it. I want to call it overfitting but that's not quite right.

<comment><USER13> This is the Law of the Instrument: if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

<comment><USER14> I don't think that's really the same meaning. Here it's more like, if you're given a hammer, you'll notice a lot of nails you can use more easily now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this providing a similar purpose to say code contracts in .NET?

Albeit I am sure this is more comprehensive.

<comment><USER15> It is like contract checking, but all the checks are done statically (at compile time) and automatically by the solver. Also, we allow the checks to only express things that the SMT solvers can decide fast (eg linear arithmetic). So, checking will definitely terminate and it will terminate fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What the difference with Agda? Why not it?

<comment><USER15> Liquid Types use the SMT solver to automatically generate proofs, while in Agda the user needs to manually specify the proofs. Also, Agda is a verification specific language, while (Liquid) Haskell is a general purpose language, which means that with Liquid Haskell your verified code can use general language features, such as exceptions, diverging code, parallelism and all the Haskell optimized libraries.

<comment><USER16> Thank you for your explanation and writing this. Added in my todo list to play with. I understand this one is the official repo: [https://github.com/ucsd- progsys/liquidhaskell](https://github.com/ucsd-progsys/liquidhaskell) ?</comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Take the Edge Off Bad Memories in Mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/science/scientists-switch-bad-memories-for-good-ones-in-mice.html?ref=science

<comment> xkcd-sucks Full paper at [https://pdf.yt/d/81I785FPAXnvTVYy](https://pdf.yt/d/81I785FPAXnvTVYy)

</comment><comment><USER2> Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.</comment>


Quiet, ladies. wadhwa is speaking now - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ameliagreenhall.com/post/quiet-ladies.-wadhwa-is-speaking-now

<comment><USER2> You know, his comments in the Newsweek piece came across to me a bit creepy, but I had no idea he had this much history. It makes the tone a lot more easy to place in context now.</comment>


Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg now worth more than Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/22/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-now-worth-more-than-steve-jobs/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I believe this, really. Certainly Facebook has made zuckerberg rich, but until there is a liquidity event it is hard to say what Facebook is really worth.</comment>


Ask HN: IP blocked after refreshing too much - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday I submitted a post and wanted to watch its votes/time trajectory as it moved up in the rankings.  In order to do that I refreshed fairly frequently and got my IP banned.
Is there a reasonable mechanism to appeal this?
For reference the ip is 126.96.36.199 <comment><USER2> You should be unbanned in about a day. I had this happen to me (and learned that Ctrl-R in Chrome has little to no delay between sending millions of requests), and was unbanned about a day later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure about appeal process.

You can watch changes on the main page at hn4d.com and just wait for the page to refresh (every few minutes). Save your refresh button too...</comment>


When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time - <AUTHOR> http://tomblomfield.com/post/81111938563/growth

<comment><USER2> Woah. How long has RapGenius had the "Powered By Genius" feature? Really cool that you can include annotations on your own domain.

<comment><USER3> I think you meant to comment in another thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7809809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7809809))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> PG's advice on how not to fail is wise: just don't give up.</comment>


Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://slackhq.com/slack-files-eu-competition-complaint-against-microsoft <comment><USER3> On one hand, the playbook of exploiting Office's dominance to push Teams is very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE.

On the other hand, Slack's walled garden is also effectively anti-competitive; trying to create a monopoly via vendor lock-in to the Slack product & ecosystem.

It feels like a better bet would be for both of them to adopt and support open interoperability standards, so users can avoid being locked into _any_ single vendor, and have full sovereignty over their conversation data. (Disclaimer: as project lead for Matrix I may be biased :)

<comment><USER4> > adopt and supporting open interoperability standards

Can you imagine not being able to send a UPS packet to a DHL address or not being able to call an AT&T phone from a Verizone one? And how long until I cannot send mails from my Gmail address to you Outlook one?

We live in the Wild West of the digital age.

I still remember the times that Microsoft was trying to own the WWW thru non- compatible Internet Explorer extensions. And, also, the time that Microsoft tried to own Java by adding Microsoft extensions to it. ([https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java- suit/](https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/))

Companies have many incentives to create lock-in software and proprietary protocols that go against the interest of their own users.

<comment><USER5> One of them being complexity and and how fast you can move on new features. Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process, this is the reason the developer of Signal decided against decentralization. You end up building XMPP, and that doesn't go so well if your specs are not very explicit. You can see this in how unreliable OMEMO is with multiple resources connected.

The Web is already a mature platform and has not actually made things more interoperable. It replaced a lot of the previous internet infrastructure that was (IRC, Newsgroups, SMTP which still somewhat clings to life)

<comment><USER6> >> Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process

Only if your not one of the Big Tech companies....

If your Google you just say "We are doing this, you can either add it to the spec or not, but we are doing it"

Then it magically gets added the spec very quickly

<comment><USER5> or it turns into signed http requests where 5+ different partically- incompatible internet drafts exist!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Blocking it's removal? How? Teams was installed with Office on my current system, and it pops up in Add/Remove Programs. IT Admins can prevent it from being installed with Office (and remove it from all of their machines if it has already been installed)[0]. It's not included with Windows either (just as Office isn't). And Slack isn't blocked from being installed either.

What's the anti-competitive angle here, other than the OS is created by Microsoft, the IM system is created by Microsoft, the Office suite is created by Microsoft, and the licenses are often bundled? Apple would be guilty of a similar thing by shipping Messages.app and iWork with macOS, no?

0: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/teams- install#...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/teams-install#how- to-exclude-microsoft-teams-from-new-installations-of-microsoft-365-apps)

<comment><USER8> Microsoft has basically a monopoly on enterprise tools such as word/excel/etc. Apple does not.

<comment><USER9> There are so many more choices than there were 20 years ago. Microsoft makes a kick ass office suite. There's nothing monopolistic about it. They've been in this game longer than anyone and that's reflected in the feature set.

Their products and licensing provide more value now than they have in a very long time. There's also G Suite which is pretty cool. Or you could use Libre Office.

Anyone complaining about monopolies today has no idea how bad things actually were in the late 90's to early 00,s. We have more high quality products from more vendors and better interoperability than probably any other time in the history of computing.

<comment><USER10> > Anyone complaining about monopolies today has no idea how bad things > actually were in the late 90's to early 00,s. We have more high quality > products from more vendors and better interoperability than probably any > other time in the history of computing.

In what areas? I see an industry with more and more consolidation. There is no longer the serious competition there once was in the field of office suites or certain kinds of creative software, which is really sad.

<comment><USER9> When was there competition in the office suite space? In the early 90's? Or the law firms that continued to use a stagnating WordPerfect for way too long after everyone else standardized on MS Office?

I entered computing at a time when there was basically nothing else available. Mac was trash and way past its glory days. Linux was a toy that no one would use seriously. The hardware support was non-existent and if you wanted to get online you often had to go buy a new modem. The other players today didn't exist yet.

It's true there is consolidation, but there are also options which didn't exist at all not too long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was previous discussion around written asynchronous communication being a superpower. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577228)

I feel that Slack dominance is hurting the productivity, because:

\- It's impossible to be productive using Slack or Teams alone. The ultimate power move is to write things up in a company wiki, google doc or an internal blog

\- Slack is incentivized to keep you IN Slack, for engagement. They don't have their own permanent-knowledge-base-software, so they pretend it's not needed.

It's a different case with Teams, because they offer quite a roster of software to write things up permanently - like sharepoint or office365 and will likely pursue integrating tighter and tighter.

Because Slack is a standalone product, they will push for using chat in the workplaces MORE. Microsoft can offer chat as a "when needed" basis.

The logistics of trying to be productive on a company group chat led me to create a free "Win at Slack" mini-course: [https://deliber.at/chat/](https://deliber.at/chat/)

<comment><USER12> >impossible to be productive using Slack or Teams alone. The ultimate power move is to write things up in a company wiki

Every Team, by default, has a Posts, Files, and Wiki tab. Designing a way to roll up those Wiki pages, like they do with Sharepoint hubs, would be a good move.

<comment><USER13> From this perspective, Notion would be the perfect acquisition for Slack. Adding a wiki / todos / workflow / document editor to Slack with deep integration.

[https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> luka-birsa It is quite amusing to see Slack filing competition complaint after being so brash in bashing MS at the launch of MS Teams.

Remember the full page ad they ran in NYT? [https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack- microsoft-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack-microsoft- teams-new-york-times-ad)

My oh my how the tables have turned. There is something to be said about Microsoft and their ability to execute in the office space. Even my Dad, an architect at 70yrs old, is using MS Teams, while he never heard about Slack or any other collaboration tools.

And looking at their product portfolio around MS Teams, if there is a company I'd be willing to bet that they win the workplace transformation race is Microsoft. It's easy to forget when you're working comfortably in the Silicon Valley tech scene, that there is a real business world out there and MS is the ruler.

<comment><USER14> Playing devil's advocate, Slack is just asking to compete on a level field. When Apple Music launched, it was preloaded on iOS. It's now the second largest streaming player. Amazon's offering comes in third. First-mover advantage seems to be best, but bundling in your platform five years late looks like a solid path to #2.

<comment><USER15> Well Slack needs more than an enterprise chat app when Google G Suite which hold 59.91% marketshare [1] also bundling a chat app.

[1] [https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites-- 370](https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--370)

<comment><USER16> You've posted almost this same exact comment 6 times already for this submission. I appreciate wanting to make a point, but the shotgun spam approach is just annoying for other users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Slack needed to learn 4 years ago that it takes more than a decent chat app to make a company fully remote. It's a critical piece of it, but your wiki, knowledge base, and business planning software are all part of it too. Microsoft bundles all of these into one package, I fail to see how they are anti-competitive when they aren't even selling the same products.

Slack failed to see how fragile their product was and now needs to be acquired or make their own productivity suite.

<comment><USER18> You can tell they didn't truly consider the full working remote scenario because their video/voice call and screen sharing functionality is below average.

Slack on its own isn't usable for remote work, it has to be Slack + Google Meet or Slack + Zoom. Slack's tech in that area just isn't up to industry standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Slack's "Dear Microsoft" [0] letter in 2016 looks even sillier now.

> Dear Microsoft,

> Wow. Big news! Congratulations on today's announcements. We're genuinely > excited to have some competition.

Uh yeah, I don't think you are..

[0] [https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft#](https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft#)

<comment><USER20> When your products next innovative feature is a lawsuit the future looks dire.

<comment><USER21> Either that or they are fishing for an acquisition offer from Oracle.

<comment><USER22> Silently wishing Zoom would buy them and become the ultimate workplace productivity company...

<comment><USER23> Zoom already has a chat app that's basically a Slack clone. I swear, if they were skinned the same, you couldn't tell the difference (in features, or layout).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sounds like a pretty desperate move to me. Teams is not preinstalled with Windows; it's part of a suite of products. Office products these days don't even need to be installed (in fact, I bet MS would rather prefer that you did not).

Imho it's a very, very weak complaint.

<comment><USER25> >Teams is not preinstalled with Windows; it's part of a suite of products.

Most businesses are buying that suite for Word/Excel. Teams comes along with it for free from their perspective. That can definitely be anti-competitive.

I agree that Slack's case is pretty weak here. It's hard to see the harm to the consumer when Microsoft's bundle is cheaper than Slack's lowest paid plan.

<comment><USER26> How is buying a productivity suite anti-competitive?

There is nothing stopping businesses from using Slack.

<comment><USER27> You can't pay for Excel without also paying for Teams. Why would you pay for two team chat solutions?

Teams is not actually free for people who don't want the rest of Office.

That being said, I don't this should be illegal.

<comment><USER28> There is a free version of Teams now: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/free)

Office web apps also have free tiers, although I don't know if there are business licensing restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The thing is, Teams integrates with the rest of Office 365 _much_ more than IE did with Windows. It's very easy to argue that it's a core part of the product.

In general, Microsoft has really nailed how if things work well together, they become more than the sum of their parts. That's why each individual part doesn't need to be the best in class in order to win. Which is bad news for Slack, but it's hard to argue that it's bad for consumers.

<comment><USER30> Well, I use Ubuntu. No problem with my two customers using Slack (one is Mac basede, the other one is more or less BYOD). All of us install the desktop app and it's done. If they switch to a more integrated system like Team maybe (and only maybe) it could be difficult for me to keep using Ubuntu when working with them. So too much can be bad for some consumer.

Btw, people consume t-shirts, but office suits?

<comment><USER31> Teams has a browser app that works just like the desktop client, which is probably just a thin wrapper around a web app.

The only thing ive missed there is the ability to take control of someone else's pc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's about time. I don't know exactly what Prince means by "gateways vs gatekeepers" in this context as Slack is itself a pretty closed system, isn't it? It's not using open protocols or interpretable with competing chat systems as far as I know. However I do find their allegations that Microsoft forces a subpar uninstallable copycat product to be accurate and credible. Teams is a bottom tier application and they are so aggressive about forcing it on users, it's a little silly.

<comment><USER33> Came here to comment on the gateways vs gatekeepers as well. Ironically enough, it wasn't so long ago that Slack decided to stop supporting their IRC and XMPP gateways.

<comment><USER34> They served their purposes of drawing users from those places into slack's walled gardens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can't really shed tears for a company which wanted to kill email and wall off content into their own proprietary product. They have ridiculed email so many times that itself is ridiculous. They are still trying to figure out interoperability of one org's chat spaces with other orgs when it was a solved problem 40 years back.

</comment><comment><USER36> Dear Slack,

You're selling something that isn't a product. Standalone chat is a feature, and you won't win against a full product offering unless you drastically reduce your prices. You need to get acquired (by Google or Facebook), because I don't think you can innovate an office productivity suite fast enough to compete. And that's clearly the enterprise puzzle piece where chat fits into nicely.

Microsoft isn't being anti-competitive here. Out of all the FAAMG, they're the one that least resembles a monopoly.

You're struggling because you are selling _chat_ as a service. Something that has been free since IRC and AOL Instant Messenger. Something any fifteen year old can write with web sockets. You built a pretty (through opinions vary) version with access controls.

You had a chance to build a moat and make acquisitions to fortify your position, _but you didn 't do it_. You invited competition from Microsoft and instead of doing something, you rewrote your Electron layout six times and made a WYSIWYG that everyone hated.

You had four or five years to do something. You had a chance most startup companies dream of. But here we are. You squandered that chance while you reveled in hubris.

You're going to get eaten, and there's not much you can do about it now.

<comment><USER37> I _somewhat_ agree with you, but I remember how Steve Jobs said much the same thing to DropBox, but DropBox beats iCloud in nearly every way to this day.

<comment><USER38> Except price. $10/month minimum is a steep cliff, and I just can't justify it.

<comment><USER39> Indeed. I'm near the 5GB limit, and Dropbox keeps annoying me about paying, but for 10/mo I'd rather go with OneDrive and get Office along for the ride.

Not that I need 1TB of cloud storage at all, which is why I haven't committed to either yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm no Microsoft fan, but this press release is a bit embarassing. For most business use cases Slack is more expensive, and less featured than Microsoft 365, and it's having to work very hard to justify its existence.

Slack could be accused of creating a "weak, copycat product" in their file hosting, document editing, video calling and workflow automation features.

I think this is a long continuation of the awkward brand strategy Slack has had for some time. "...an open platform is essential" [1] just doesn't ring true from a closed source SaaS, but it's a good marketing message - so vague that you can't really disagree. And weirdly it's gone from being a poorly conceived guerilla marketing strategy (almost complete with bespoke emoji [2]) to a legal case.

It maybe explains how Slack has been racing to embrace Microsoft recently - <USER2> a bid to show how "open" they are, and therefore how much they have been damaged by "closed" Microsoft? But wouldn't that swing both ways - if they integrate so easily, then where is the monopoly?

Nov 2016 - Slack declares how thoughtful, craftmanship-y, open, loving, long term-y and un-Microsoft-y they are [1]

Jan 2018 - Teams launches app store

Aug 2018 - Teams offers free tier to compete with Slack [3]

Mar 2020 - Slack starts integrating Teams calls [4]

Apr 2020 - Slack launches Outlook and One Drive apps [5]

[1] [https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft](https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft) [2] [https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793870058955104257](https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793870058955104257) [3] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17563710/microsoft- teams-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17563710/microsoft-teams-free- version-slack-competitor) [4] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197091/slack- microsoft-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197091/slack-microsoft- teams-integration-calling-features) [5] [https://slackhq.com/increase- everyday-productivity-with-offi...](https://slackhq.com/increase-everyday- productivity-with-office-365-apps-for-slack)

<comment><USER37> > For most business use cases Slack is more expensive, and less featured than > Microsoft 365, and it's having to work very hard to justify its existence.

I think that's exactly the complaint: that Microsoft is hiding the true cost of Teams, using anti-competitive "bundling" to make Slack seem more expensive by comparison.

Not saying I agree, but that does seem to be exactly the complaint.

<comment><USER41> Giving a discount by bundling products together is anti-competitive behavior? I don't really follow this reasoning. Bundling services together like that is extremely common in all sorts of industries.

<comment><USER37> Yes, but bundling is also extremely common in anti-trust cases[0].

The goal of bundling is usually to introduce people who like one of your products to your other presumably-equally-good products, especially if they integrate well. Right? Sounds good!

If you're incredibly successful at that, and the most popular of your products is market-dominating, then that may be leveraging your market position to squeeze out competitors.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(antitrust_law)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_\(antitrust_law\))

<comment><USER40> Fair enough. But this isn't exactly humble chat app David versus ubiquitous groupware Goliath. Slack is growing fast, has had very large investment and is also trying to dominate this space by bundling as much as it can too. Their aspiration seems to want to be on the other side of this lawsuit in future.

(Incidentally it feels like that's where every business productivity tool ends up going: my file sharing service lets me edit documents, my project management tool lets me send emails, my email client lets me chat, my CRM lets me log tickets, my code repository service lets me host websites etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The additional problem I see with Slack is that their calls/video chat option is really inadequate and almost everyone is opting for Zoom. Zoom + Slack is a very steep price point for a lot of companies, especially in an era of cost saving and insecurity about the future.

My company opted to move to MS Teams because the experience is better as it integrates calls + chats and we were already using office365 for emails and documents anyway, so it was "free". As someone said already, it's hard to compete with free.

I can't see Slack getting out of this in one piece. I see Amazon being the obvious choice here.

</comment><comment><USER43> Didn't their CEO say that Teams is not a competitor.

Looks like he said it in May 2020. So i wonder what happened since then.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270421/slack-ceo- stewar...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270421/slack-ceo-stewart- butterfield-microsoft-teams-competition)

<comment><USER44> If I'm not mistaken their CEO (Stewart) is known for saying some... Weird things. And then changing his mind right after. (My experience is from as an user on early Flickr days and his game, Glitch.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Find it odd that so many people hate Teams so much. For me, it works considerably better than using Slack did in my previous position; the only downside for me personally was the lack of a Linux client initially, which is now present.

It's also considerably better than Slack for mixing other communications in, which is widely used in corporates: video calling, screen sharing, and the fact that you can hook it in with phone systems. Given it's effectively replaced Skype, that's not really surprising. Prior to teams being introduced at my current company, we were using a mix of Jabber, Cisco WebEx, and other ad-hoc tools in various teams. Now we can use Teams to do all of that.

</comment><comment><USER46> "Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers"

Is teams auto installed with the Office suite and can it not be uninstalled?

<comment><USER32> Yes it is auto-installed and auto starts and is very annoying to get rid of, as a sysadmin. It also installs itself per-user, so non-admins get prompted constantly to install it themselves and can do so even with limited privileges. It is persistent.

<comment><USER26> You can disable teams entirely from your deployment.

<comment><USER32> Good luck doing that when it was automatically enabled and deployed, so now users have data on it already.

<comment><USER47> If you're deploying office anyway you simply remove teams from the config XML for the installer. Pretty simple really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> >Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.

So what's the core issue here? That Microsoft bundles Teams with Office 365, or that it gets auto-installed and can't be removed? If that's considered anti-competitive, is it possible for eg. Evernote to go after them as well, because OneNote is also bundled? What about Dropbox, because Onedrive is bundled?

<comment><USER49> Not OC, IMO MS should be forced to offer 2 different products, Office without Teams and Teams should be an independent product you would have to opt-in and buy. Then if Teams and Office communicate then this protocol should be open so anyone could use it.

<comment><USER50> but what makes teams different from the rest of the suite? to me it sound like arguing that bundles should not exist.

<comment><USER49> Yes, I think we need to investigate if bundles is a good thing for the world. I have an old memory from my childhood, in Romania during communism I went with my grandma to buy oil(or something like that) and if we wanted to buy that we were also forced to buy some other crap like pencils so the shop would get rid of old stock(I apologize if my memory is tricking me , maybe someone can confirm this I can't find anything on google with my search terms). So bundling feels to me dirty, I get forced into something I might not like.

Maybe the actual problem is that big companies have a lot of money that they can spend on this products and offer them for free then make it impossible to create a fair competition. Would MS get the same Windows installs if the computers would come with the choice of different OSs )from what I read in most shops in the world options with alternatives are not present)

<comment><USER48> >I have an old memory from my childhood, in Romania during communism I went with my grandma to buy oil(or something like that) and if we wanted to buy that we were also forced to buy some other crap like pencils so the shop would get rid of old stock

bundling of physical goods with bundling of digital goods isn't really comparable because the latter doesn't have any marginal cost. If you don't use it, nothing's being wasted.

>So bundling feels to me dirty, I get forced into something I might not like.

That's not really a problem with bundling per se. If I get amazon prime for free/fast shipping and it includes free prime video and twitch prime, I don't feel "forced" into using those services. What's happening in this case though, is that microsoft was apparently auto-installing teams, which is questionable but not something intrinsic with bundling.

>Maybe the actual problem is that big companies have a lot of money that they can spend on this products and offer them for free then make it impossible to create a fair competition.

Can't you make the same argument about any free service offered by a company? eg. free cloudflare making it harder for paid cdns to compete, or free git hosting by github/gitlab making ti hard for a paid service to compete?

<comment><USER49> About free GitHub, if GitHub financials would be independent and they can afford offering some free feature then I think is 100% fair, it would not be fair if GitHub would get money from Azure profits so they can offer everything for free so all competitors fail.

When I buy something and get some extra free crap-ware, is that actually free? As an example some internet companies here would offer you as a free bonus antivirus software - is that free or it is paid from our money and maybe with our data ? Is Amazon Prime free stuff free or it is paid from your pocket but in an indirect way.

The example from my memory was more about the felling I have when I think about that, is like when you buy a phone or some OS and some shit is already installed and you can't remove it,

<comment><USER48> > About free GitHub, if GitHub financials would be independent and they can > afford offering some free feature then I think is 100% fair, it would not be > fair if GitHub would get money from Azure profits so they can offer > everything for free so all competitors fail.

So what you're saying is that if github is offering it for free, and they themselves are profitable, that's fine, but if the company is being subsidized by microsoft it's not fine? Why draw an arbitrary distinction at the corporate level? Furthermore, if microsoft teams is being developed under the team/organization as the rest of office, is that fine then?

Also, what about github gists? It's a free pastebin that has zero connection to the main site. You can post with an account or anonymously. Either way it's free, and there aren't any benefits conferred to you for having a github pro subscription. Is github being anti-competitive by offering it? Are they putting all the other pastebin websites out of business? If anything it's _worse_ than teams because with teams you at least have to pay for the bundle to access it.

>Is Amazon Prime free stuff free or it is paid from your pocket but in an indirect way.

I'm not sure how prime video (included with amazon prime) can ever be profitable on its own. They spend millions (billions?) on original programming. How can you ever recoup that by some "indirect way"?

>The example from my memory was more about the felling I have when I think about that, is like when you buy a phone or some OS and some shit is already installed and you can't remove it,

You're probably talking about software vendors who pay OEMs to have their software pre-installed on their phones. In this case the software vendor hopes they can recoup the initial cost somehow (eg. by showing ads, collecting data, or upselling the customer to a paid subscription). This is very different than what microsoft's doing. There's no ads in teams. It's probably not spying on you (and even if it did microsoft could already do that on its own). There isn't teams premium either. In short, the incentive structure is completely different.

<comment><USER49> Maybe my solution is not good, do you have a better one or you think there is no problem here and giants can abuse their money to subsidize some stuff not because they want to be nice but because they want to win a market that can later exploit or because they want to kill possible competition. A similar problem is happening when giants buy smaller competitors and close them down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been using Slack for a while and quite much like the basic functionality (chat) when you working in single organization context.

However recently I've been playing around with Teams quite a bit and I'm feeling this integrated experience with all the tools is the future. Even when running just in browser it is already pretty good. You have chat, calls, mail, can collaborate on documents etc. Having everything in one package feels convenient. Not saying it's perfect. There are bugs and for example different file storage backends (Sharepoint vs Onedrive) are a bit confusing.

It will be challenging to for these "best of breed" apps (Dropbox, Slack, Zoom) to compete with the integrated offering from Microsoft. It's just so easy to get everything from single vendor. One user/group management, one invoice etc.

<comment><USER24> _> It will be challenging to for these "best of breed" apps (Dropbox, Slack, Zoom) to compete with the integrated offering from Microsoft._

It has always been. Windows has had Dropbox-like features all the way back to 1998; but they sucked (and there wasn't enough bandwidth...), so people didn't use them. We've had corporate IM offerings since forever, and Skype existed waaay before Zoom. The likes of Dropbox have thrived _by focusing on building better products, more powerful and easier to use_. There is space for everyone in the market, if they have the best product and/or the best timing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is so strange. I seem to remember Slack somewhat mockingly welcoming the competition in this space when Teams launched.

<comment><USER53> Honestly, Slack has become so baffling to me. As somebody who used it every day for a couple of years at work, then not for a year or so, it is completely unrecognizable today and (in my opinion) a lot more complex to use. I have a hard time reading and understanding the layouts in Slack as it stands today.

<comment><USER54> The (newish) mobile app on iOS is really confusing layout wise, I thought I'd get used to it but it confuses me every time. It's also weirdly slow for a native app, I'm not sure how they managed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I really think we need some laws which require companies to open their protocols to allow seamless integration with other companies or open source implementations. There is no real reason why this should not be possible. E.g. take chat protocols. WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Hangout, and all the others. It would be easy to have some way that they could communicate with each other. But companies don't want that, because they want the vendor lock- in. This is bad for everyone in the end. The only real way to solve this is if this is enforced by some law. I'm not really seeing that some law like this would be possible in the US, though. But maybe in EU...

<comment><USER56> You can't force someone to use open protocols. What if their value preposition is exactly that, superiority to open protocols?

<comment><USER55> You can't enforce that, but you can enforce that they open their own protocol, and also that the API is open to be used by anyone else, i.e. anyone can develop an own client.

<comment><USER41> How does that work with top-down moderation? E.g. some user X is harassing other users, so the company running the platform wants to ban them. If the protocol is open, isn't banning basically impossible, since they could just change to a client not controlled by said company?

edit: hmm, I guess this depends on what it means for the protocol to be open vs the platform itself...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Same guys that on November 2nd, 2016, run a full page ad on the NYT [0], titled "Welcome, Microsoft, to the revolution", and signed "your friends at Slack".

How ironic.

[0]: [https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft](https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft)

<comment><USER58> Wrong thread?

<comment><USER59> We'll move it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Teams from what I understand is pretty much free with office. Slack is going to have a hard team competing with free. It also doesn't have the same video desktop sharing capabilities as teams from when I last used it.

<comment><USER61> Well, without a strong opinion either way, I'd just point out that IE was free with Windows (where their competitors were not,) and that point didn't work out all that well for Microsoft in the end.

<comment><USER62> > that point didn't work out all that well for Microsoft in the end.

But in the end it worked perfectly well for Microsoft. The settlement was essentially a slap on the wrist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I've been thinking about antitrust a lot recently. Years ago, Microsoft were losing in court over the right to ship their browser with their operating system.

Now, you get reminded how great Edge is when you try to change your default browser, you get the new one in a forced Windows update that launches the browser itself on startup, places shortcuts back in your task bar, etc.

</comment><comment><USER64> I personally see this as a weak move. Surely a bundle of software can include whatever they desire to include.

What next a law suit for bundling Access? Don't get any ideas Oracle...

<comment><USER65> Yes, I am personally disgusted that installing Office FORCES a word processor and spreadsheet to be installed when all I wanted was WMF clip art!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I have used slack at 3 different jobs and they seem to have lost touch with what the user wants and struggles with in their environment. Before launching some anticompetitive tirade they should focus on becoming a better product. There is no way I'm going to side with them while they auto hide contacts that I talk to throughout the day just because I have a list of several hundred. Also what's up with not allowing multiple tabs open to view multiple conversations at the same time? Even Facebook has that feature. If anyone at slack is listening.. get off your antitrust high horse and get back to coding, you've let your product become inferior and this just sounds pathetic asking for the government to step in and help you do what your design/dev team cannot do for you.

</comment><comment><USER67> I think Slack's case against MS has legs. I work for a company that makes a competitive product ([https://www.airsend.io](https://www.airsend.io)) to Teams/Slack. It gives a bit of insight on what is happening here.

Teams comes free with office 365 (now microsoft 365). For just 5$ per user/per month one can get email/one drive/office web apps and teams. There is no way slack can compete with the pricing. Slack's pricing starts at 6.67$. For businesses, office apps are a must have. When Teams is bundled with office apps, there is really not a reason for businesses to go and pay for Slack. So one can argue MS is using its dominant position in office suite to undercut the competition. The fair thing to do is charge some money for Teams. Personally I feel we need to have more diversity and choices in the IT systems we use. Increasingly the tools we use are controlled by 2/3 dominant platforms (4 companies account for 49% value of Nasdaq 100). It is not good for customers in the long term. Once you obliterate the competition by bundling it free, one can always come back and raise the price.

There is some serious blood between MS and Slack (It all goes back to the time when MS tried to acquire Slack). FWIW, Slack's posture during that time was also not really good (Cocky). I am guessing - It hurt somebody's ego very badly in MS. So the leadership team in MS made it as a personal mission to obliterate Slack. The whole game is playing out now.

</comment><comment><USER68> There are laws and companies will use those laws to their advantage as much as possible. Not doing so is stupid.

Just as Slack is trying to get Microsoft in trouble over antitrust, Microsoft is currently trying to get the US to investigate Apple over their App Store. Everyone is looking for an edge. It is better to use that edge while you're competitive than when its too late. Except in Microsoft's complaint about the App Store, the train left the station a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER69> The thing this has me thinking about is, assuming Slack wins this lawsuit, can MS no longer add any more fully featured products to Office? Not saying that is good vs bad, it just becomes interesting if their position suddenly means they must create new bundles for new offerings and cannot ever leverage existing offerings to get into a market.

Perhaps that would be fair, being such a massive company. I just don't know.

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm surprised Discord isn't showing up in the comments. We moved from Slack to Discord (even though we get Teams "for free" it doesn't get as much usage and setting it up to work with outside-the-org collaborators is painful), and I know of a lot of other companies / open-source projects moving to Discord too.

The only thing we're really missing from Slack is threads.

<comment><USER71> yeah, I agree. Also, gamers and teenagers are using it and not Teams or Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> It's definitely monopolistic to include Teams into Office(Excel,Word,PPT) only after slack shows value. As a user though, Teams is working out well for us.

This is MS's version of sherlocking. Every big Tech company does this.

I think one work around would be to have an independent council that recognizes these events, and forces the big players to pay out $100M per incident. This might satisfy most parties involved.

<comment><USER73> Most regulators play pretty much that role, and the EC has that sort of power. Doesn't seem to actually achieve much though - they stop short of breaking up companies which is probably the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Idea: find some feature that's part of a software suite, like the ability to zoom on Windows. Build a business around just that feature, like sell a zoom tool for Windows. If the business flounders start an anti-trust lawsuit because Microsoft includes that feature for free in Windows.

</comment><comment><USER75> Hey i am wondering if someone within knowledge of EU competition law can give their analysis on this.

The thing that stands out to me is that this is a private competition law action - it is not a government agency/commission taking action. This indicates that the government agencies in the jurisdiction don't currently see this as a priority. Many of the prominent anti trust actions in tech have been taken by regulators (eg EU commission vs Google).

From my brief understanding of competition law barriers to entry and consumer detriment are issues the court considers. As others have stated, Microsoft is far less dominant with cloud office products than they were with windows pcs in the 90s. They are also not the incumbent in the chat market trying to block competition out.

</comment><comment><USER76> So this is another reboot of the browser wars but with messengers? Is this the new era of messenger wars?

<comment><USER65> Yes it seems so! But it's different to the browser wars because the browsers used to used sensible amounts of RAM, and these "modern" chat systems seem to like ballooning quantities of RAM for displaying text and pictures, eg. Slack on my Mac is using 365MB of RAM via its 5 processes.

If only the wars was about efficient applications then we would all win.

I recall using MSN Messenger on a machine with 64 MB of RAM I think and it did approximately the same - instant messaging.

<comment><USER76> well chrome has won the browser wars in the long run and chrome is notorious for its memory hunger. So maybe RAM hogging is the key to success. Interestingly Teams uses >1.2GB of RAM via its 6 processes on my mac, same as Outlook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Something I didn't see someone mentioning: Microsoft is moving everyone from Skype for Business over to Teams. Any enterprise customer will have to migrate. Skype for Business is quite different from Skype itself, basically a marketing thing.

Moving enterprise customers over from a chat&screen sharing app to teams is quite a change. There's loads more functionality, options, etc. I don't think if you had Skype for Business before you'd ever consider anything such as Slack or similar.

From what I noticed Skype for Business is used often within enterprise companies.

<comment><USER78> Skype for Business was a horrible horrible product and i'm glad we were switched to Teams

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Slack has a quality problem that they really need to get on solving. Their desktop client has way too many weird quirks, and I just plain refuse to run their android client anymore.

That said,it sucks less than teams.

</comment><comment><USER80> Messaging is big and Slack is too small to compete in this space. The only viable way out for Slack is to join Google. Because we all know Google can't build messaging apps!

</comment><comment><USER81> I think there needs to be a law that forces companies that benefit from network effects to open their standards once they reach a certain market power (similar to antitrust and monopoly laws).

For example, Twitter would be forced to open their standard and then anyone can build clients (and host servers), just like IMAP and POP3 works for email.

I think this even will have a bigger effect than breaking up these companies, and it will be easier to push through politically.

Edit: Typo

</comment><comment><USER82> Can I be against MS bundling Teams _and_ against Slack using the government to unbundle it? I know that public companies attack for growth at all angles, including litigious ones, but this turns me off of Slack's general business strategy (if I wasn't already). I yearn for the company that accepts modest growth, applies its principles to itself only, and remains technically focused no matter how large.

<comment><USER73> There are two main conceptions of antitrust: making markets fairer, and controlling price for consumers. The latter is the American approach, the former the European. It is worth considering the fact that without adequate competition prices will rise and quality will fall. Slack are essentially asking for a market optimisation to allow them to continue improving their product without Microsoft maneuvering to reduce its effective price to zero. This, I would say, is a net gain for everybody.

<comment><USER82> That's the point, they don't need market optimization to continue improving their product. They are just leveraging it because it's a weapon provided to them. There is no lack of adequate competition in the chat space and no need for the government to make MS stop including the products it wants to in its office suite.

While this individual action may appear on the surface a net gain for everybody (though you surely meant everybody but Microsoft), the net negatives of continued unnecessary government interference in tech are harder to recognize since each just increases legislative momentum. Then we get surprised we weren't stauncher and more principled when the heavier hand is shown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Can someone explain to me how the "leading channel-based messaging platform" can complain about a smaller competitor bundling with a large product?

<comment><USER84> Team is already bigger than slack.

> Slack previously revealed it has 12 million daily active users back in > October, but the company has not publicly updated this number since. > Microsoft Teams usage has soared over the past year, reaching 44 million > daily active users during a big increase in demand earlier this month. Slack > has instead been trying to steer the conversation to how many actions are > taken in Slack compared to its competitors, and how much people love to use > its app.

0] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21195092/slack-new- user-r...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21195092/slack-new-user-records- coronavirus-pandemic-remote-working-growth-concurrent-users)

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> As a layman, it seems link companies looking to cut costs in current environment are finding Teams (free) more sensible option than paying millions to Slack. So while the WFH push is doing wonders for other communication platforms like Zoom, Slack is not seeing that benefit. Otherwise, it looks a bad time for a company to be distracted by political games.

</comment><comment><USER86> The battle of the glorified IRCs is on! Sure, Microsoft is shady as usual (not all of it, but a good part), but once Teams get stable and everything actually works, it should smoke Slack. At least Teams offers more than chat, and it has a justified need for running in a browser.

</comment><comment><USER87> The best move now would be for Slack, Zoom to merge, buy Airtable and Webflow, quickly try to build a moat. No one will get this opportunity again. But they might just build the next Google/Facebook/Apple this way.

</comment><comment> tedk-42 Sounds like a typical corporate move by Microsoft. I side with slack on this one in that Microsoft is using its position with Office as a dominant productivity tool and wedging their Teams product in there.

Vox had an article about it a year ago: [https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20910510/microsoft- government...](https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20910510/microsoft-government- antitrust-investigation-apple-amazon-google-facebook)

It's the long game they can play because they have the resources for it. If they bankrupt slack by offering an alternative that's free and almost at feature parity, then it's an easy win for them to absorb the short term running costs of their own chat product Teams.

<comment><USER88> What about Microsoft bundling OneDrive? Or One Note? Should they be forced to remove those too? I don't understand how Microsoft is in the wrong here. This isn't like them bundling it into Windows. O365 is a paid product and users are specifically paying for a productivity bundle, where Teams makes perfect sense as a product. They previously bundled Skype here IIRC, which was also a chatting app, they just replaced it with Teams.

If you want to argue that Teams ripped off of Slack, I won't disagree with you there. But Slack was just an evolution of IRC + plugins also. So it isn't a novel idea that they came up with, it was just well executed.

I don't even like Teams, I much prefer using Slack. But Microsoft having a productivity suite where they're offering a productivity app seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Google is doing the same thing with Google Meet/Chat, it's going to get bundled in Google Apps for Business.

<comment> tedk-42 I don't mind products competing against each other and copying features from each other.

But to make a clone of a product, and slip it into your existing offering which is very popular amongst the general populous is an anti-competitive practice.

Microsoft consistently walk a fine line with this sort of crap. Whenever I update my PC, I DO NOT want to know about the new features of Edge and then be prompted to replace my default browser with it.

Firefox, Chrome and other browsers don't charge for their product but Slack does. It's this sort of thing that in which Microsoft need an occasional slap in the face for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> > its market-dominant Office productivity suite

is it really that dominant nowadays? I think it was around late 2000s when I last saw a 'use MS Word format' in any personal/corporate document exchange

</comment><comment><USER90> Slightly off topic, but when you share this article via social media, the page title becomes:

"Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft - _Several People Are Typing_ " [1]

Due to the og:title tag being different.

\---

[1] Emphasis mine.

</comment><comment><USER91> Not exactly related but how is Microsoft's approach to Teams any different than Google's approach to Google Chat (or Hangouts Chat) that also is component of G-suite?

<comment><USER92> G-Suite isn't a monopoly, but Office is.

<comment><USER15> According to [https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites-- 370](https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--370) Google holds more marketshare with G Suite with 59.91%, compared to Microsoft Office 365 with 39.96%

<comment><USER59> You posted this 5 times. Please don't post duplicate comments to HN. It strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio.

If you want to refer to what you posted elsewhere, a link is fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> If someone could make a JIRA/Confluence/Slack for devs it would make my current life* very easy.

* life consists of Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Confluence and Sharepoint....

<comment><USER94> If you are on Jira Cloud ping me, we have something very interesting launching soon ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> one of those times, where I will say the big co isn't in the wrong. slack, has suffered the hand of the market. that the deck, the market dealt wasn't in your favor. is slack a product, could be ? but what are the advantages ? strategy 101. real business don't ride on fashion, but utility. teams is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER96> IRC files a law suit against slack.

<comment><USER34> Next step is for microsoft to start running gateways into slack, leaving users on slack as second class citizens, and then shutting down the gateways when enough users have been pulled into their walled gardens to give them critical mass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> But Google and Apple do exactly the same thing? Why no competition complain for them?

</comment><comment><USER98> > We want to be the 2% of your software budget that makes the other 98% more > valuable; they want 100% of your budget every time.

Please. You are a company in a capitalistic system, it's your goal to make money. If you'd have the chance, you'd also take 100% of your customers money every time.

</comment><comment><USER99> i do love one walled-garden suing another

</comment><comment><USER100> Don't worry. Teams is terrible, you don't need to worry.

</comment><comment><USER101> They are trying the sco business model, look how that turned out for them!

</comment><comment><USER102> Good for Slack. Filing a major lawsuit against one of the biggest tech companies is an incredible decision to make.

Microsoft has been doing this for years with basically all of its products and hasn't really changed its behavior [1]. They continue to get fined for not abiding by earlier EU judgements and rulings.

Curious to see what regulators end up doing to force compliance since these fines don't seem to do so.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/business/dealbook/eu- anti...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/business/dealbook/eu-antitrust- tech-stocks.html)

</comment><comment><USER53> > _Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant > Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its > removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers._

I feel like it's bad for a society to place no weight on agreements. "Force installing" is a pretty bold claim, given that Office is a piece of self- updating software that adds new components on a regular basis, and which says as much when you install it. Teams is a component of the Office suite in the same way that Microsoft's SSO system is.

If this point is considered to contribute to a successful claim, I think it says something sad about the EC.

<comment><USER103> "force installing" in this context means "you want X? you're getting Y too, whether you like it or not".

No, you're not forced to install both X and Y. But it's pretty clearly taking advantage of a dominant market position.

<comment><USER53> "I want to install Discord, but without FFMPEG" is not grounds for a complaint.

I don't like Microsoft's software, nor do I use it, but if this is illegal and the Apple App Store isn't, the EC is none but a lawfare weapon for many- billionaire companies.</comment></comment></comment>


The iPhone App Store is the world's biggest walled garden. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/07/28/hey-iphone-are-you-a-computer-or-a-phone/

<comment><USER2> If there is one thing that has turned me off apple it's the iphone + appstore combo, as well as their exclusive deals with certain telcos.

I know it's a huge hit businesswise and everybody is really happy with their iphones - well, not everybody but for the most part - but instead I find myself thinking about how great it would have been if Apple had made this a completely open platform.

There would have been an order of magnitude more applications for it and people would have bought their iphones 'plan-less' from the apple store and a plan to go with it from their favourite provider.

</comment><comment><USER3> umm facebook?</comment>